According to recent trends, individual consumers and families are adopting greater numbers and varieties of network accessible devices and applications that can be used in and around the home. The devices include wired and wireless devices that access network resources according to one or more access technologies. Some examples of access technologies include, cable, fiber, digital subscriber lines (DSL), wireless local area network (LAN), e.g., WiFi, BlueTooth, and mobile cellular, e.g., 3G, 4G.
The devices and applications can be used to access one or more network accessible services, such as broadcast media, voice, messaging, Internet services, and the like. A common residential configuration provides a home or residential gateway device that connects a residential LAN with another network outside of the home, such as an access network and/or a wide area network (WAN), e.g., the Internet. Access to a WAN can be provided via the access network, which can be provided by a carrier service provider, employing transport technologies, such as cable, fiber or DSL.
The term home or residential gateway was originally used to distinguish inexpensive networking devices designated for use in home environments from similar devices used in corporate LAN environments, which traditionally offered a greater array of capabilities. The residential gateway device may include one or more of a cable modem, a DSL modem, a wired router and a wireless access point, a wireless router, a network switch, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) analog telephone adapter, and the like. Wireless access point and/or router can implement one or more of the IEEE 802.11 wireless protocols.